InformAction Forums

Some Post Are SLOW To Post/Preview

Like this one, http://forums.informaction.com/viewtopi ... 5067#p5067.

I gather because of the objects included & whatever else & the (board) filtering that the posts run through, it is extremely slow to Post or Preview.

(And you know me, how I make 1,000 changes to a post before I'm done ... the delay adds up.)

[not sure why I posted this here. probably should move to ... i'll look in the morning if its not gone by then]

Confirmed. With the post in question I get about 11 seconds of "Waiting for forums.informaction.com" before it proceeds. The wait is negligible for most posts, such as this one.

Unconfirmed. Tried twice in a row, total load time 2 seconds, maybe 3 at most. Didn't stop-watch it.
Will adjust a few configs and try to reproduce.

Edit: Still can't reproduce, although I've had other instances. Random fluctuations in server load?
Pinged the forum. 0 loss, mean time =136 ms.

FWIW, the page-load bar still hasn't completed, but I can go ahead and "send" anyway.

I get it happening occasionally, I think its a server load issue. Sometimes it gets a hickup on its bandwidth, nothing that is permanent or disabling in function.

Over the past couple of days, a new phenom: The page will appear to have loaded fully, but the progress bar never gets to completion (or I get tired of waiting for it). I can usually continue the functions (like send mail or whatever), except for issues discussed elsewhere (NS Dev). I'm thinking, maybe some (ad) script persists in trying to run despite being blocked, or some request that ABE blocks refuses to go away, keeps trying, and hence the incomplete progress bar?

Anyone else notice this? Other than issues discussed elsewhere, it's only distracting, usually not dysfunctional. But only recently noticed.

btw, re: link in OP: just tried it again from this Preview pane and counted Mississippis. Loaded in less than 2 seconds. However, many pages loading not all at once, but in chunks, sort of like the old 14k dial-up modem days. Much faster, but still in visible chunks, even if in less than 2 seconds. Have cable advertised at 7MBPS and tested 2.5-6.5, so things *used* to load "instantly". FWIW

Tom T. wrote:Over the past couple of days, a new phenom: The page will appear to have loaded fully, but the progress bar never gets to completion (or I get tired of waiting for it).

Me too, but it's not new for me. I just ignore it or hit ESC.

Yeah me too, I see it keep going and going but I continue to do something and as soon as I click or type something, it stops and shows the icon.

I've noticed that issue too, but attributed it to having JavaScript disabled .

Nope, I have been running with fully naked profile (for testing purposes) and it keeps doing that, so that's not it I think maybe its pulling resources from a cross domain that has a lower bandwidth and the browser is still waiting for all resources so it says that but the critical components are already loaded, so it functions just fine.

therube wrote:Some Post Are SLOW To Post/Preview

Like this one, http://forums.informaction.com/viewtopi ... 5067#p5067.

And this one too, but only for Post or Preview. http://forums.informaction.com/viewtopi ... 5510#p5510
I started getting the 11 second delay with the message "Waiting for forums.informaction.com" as soon as I used the Img tag. Bit of a pain since I do so much editing before posting.

Preview and post no delays.

1. I posted the above in the thread that was said to be slow and it was near instant.
2. I split/merged it here so it would be relevant to the discussion.

I believe it would be worth noting that sometimes I think it might be delayed because multiple people are working on that same topic or viewing it or editing it and it needs to verify consistency before returning a response, so that might be the reason. Otherwise no idea why it sometimes happens, I always figured a server bandwidth bottleneck or momentary overload.

Alan Baxter wrote:And this one too, but only for Post or Preview. http://forums.informaction.com/viewtopi ... 5510#p5510
I started getting the 11 second delay with the message "Waiting for forums.informaction.com" as soon as I used the Img tag.

I've identified how to cause the problem, and it's consistently reproducible. If I include the line in any post (without the Code tag), and click Preview, then there's an 11 second pause while "Waiting for forums.informaction.com" is displayed in the status bar before the preview finishes loading. If that line is left out, then there is no 11 second delay. This behavior seems to be independent of time of day, server load, or who is working on the topic, but is perfectly correlated with whether the post contains an Img tag, at least the one I'm using in my test case.

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.0.10) Gecko/2009042316 Firefox/3.0.10
NoScript 1.9.3.9
Default theme with no other extensions, but get the same behavior in my profile which uses 59 extensions. It also behaves exactly the same way if I log in with my test account that has no mod privileges.

Edit: I get exactly the same 11 second display if include this image from static.mozillazine.org instead of the one from software.informaction.com. The delay does not seem to depend on the source of the image, merely the fact that one is being embedded with the Img tag.

Interesting, its good to know. Thanks for sharing.

Additional information.

Alan Baxter wrote:I've identified how to cause the problem, and it's consistently reproducible. If I include the line

Code: Select all

[img]http://software.informaction.com/data/noscript/prt16.png[/img]

in any post (without the Code tag), and click Preview, then there's an 11 second pause while "Waiting for forums.informaction.com" is displayed in the status bar before the preview finishes loading....

I've tested this on a couple of similar phpBB forums. They do not have the "Waiting for ..." problem when previewing a post with an embedded image.
http://forums.mozillazine.org
http://forums.lanik.us

I believe it has something to do with the size limits configured on the board.
I bet PHPBB needs to download the image locally and parse it with the GD library.
Checking...